


Stages

by wunkind (guysinmyhead)



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Angst, Attempted Suicide, Depression, M/M, Mental Illness, Thoughts of Suicide, Zine: Namida, light ending, mental health
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-05-31 15:21:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19428697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guysinmyhead/pseuds/wunkind
Summary: WARNING: PLEASE READ ALL OF THE TAGS BEFORE PROCEEDINGFOLLOW-UP WARNING: the end note is very heavy. Do not read if you don’t feel you can.





	Stages

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: PLEASE READ ALL OF THE TAGS BEFORE PROCEEDING  
> FOLLOW-UP WARNING: the end note is very heavy. Do not read if you don’t feel you can.

“I never pictured myself coaching.” Viktor admitted quietly, head turned away from the cameras to murmur in the other’s ear just before he turned back and gave a smile.   
  
A camera flashed.   
  
Yuuri leaned ever-so-slightly sideways.   
  
This was hopefully his first of many international golds, but Viktor wouldn’t be on the ice to share any more of them.   
  
“What did you picture yourself doing now?”   
  
Now.   
  
He meant “after you retired.”   
  
“Nothing.”   
  
—————   
  
To be fair, Viktor felt like you got to a point in a competitive and athletic field and stopped remembering there was an “after” at all. Yuuri hadn’t, of course, because Yuuri was smart and talented. He went to school, got good grades, got a degree, planned a whole life outside of competitive figure skating.   
  
Viktor...   
  
His life had moved in stages. He wondered sometimes if everyone else’s worked like that, too, or if it were just him. First, he made it to Juniors. Then he couldn’t picture the Senior division, to worried he’d fail somewhere along the lines. But then he made seniors and what’s more, he did well, and it wasn’t that no other stage existed.   
  
It was just that he stopped imagining it.   
  
Nothing came after skating.   
  
“Come to the rink, Vitya.” Yuuri urged softly. Viktor could feel the weight shift as his fiancé sat on the other side of the bed, leaned to shake him gently with one hand. “It’s at least something to do.”   
  
“It’s off-season.” Viktor said by way of declining the invite.   
  
“It’s still good to work—“   
  
“Towards what?” His voice sounded foreign, even to his own ears. “There’s not a next season anyways.”   
  
“You don’t want to tour with that Russian ice show?” He sounded surprised.   
  
“Turned them down last week.” Viktor buried his face in the pillow.   
  
His admission was met with silence.   
  
“Why would you do that?”   
  
_Are you upset with me? I’m upset with me, too. We should start a club. It was embarrassing to even be asked to such a show, like an old man who can’t skate anymore._ _  
_   
“Vitya?”   
  
“I couldn’t do it.” His whine was muffled by the pillow. Here he was. 29 years old. Complaining like a teenager.   
  
“Why not? It would’ve been fun. We could’ve done something together, I’m sure—“   
  
“They just invited me to officially join the ranks of old, washed up skaters that Russia had forgot even exist!” Viktor snapped, finally turning his head to look at Yuuri. “I’m not going to participate in something like that.”   
  
Silence again.   
  
“You need to do something.” Yuuri tried again. “You could still coach, Yakov would help you I’m sure. He’s always firing staff, he could use you.”   
  
“He said I’m a terrible coach.” Viktor huffed, hugging the comforter to his chest and turning away again.   
  
“You coached me well enough,” _Until I didn’t._ “You could coach me again, put it on your resume—“   
  
“I don’t want to coach you again. I don’t want to coach. It’s not worth ruining your career over.”   
  
“Viktor, you didn’t ruin my career...”   
  
Viktor buried his face in the pillow again to hide the tears. He was being so childish right now, it was a wonder Yuuri didn’t snap at him.   
  
The weight left the bed with a sigh. Footsteps, the bedroom door, the hall closet, Makka’s disappointed whine as Yuuri told her she couldn’t come, the front door closing.   
  
In that order.   
  
That was the closest to a regiment Viktor had right now, those sounds in that sequence.   
  
_You disappointed him again._ _  
_   
Viktor couldn’t think of a time he hadn’t. He hadn’t kept his promise and coached Yuuri to a gold medal. He’d gotten as far as their first World’s before falling apart. Yakov was right, you couldn’t coach and compete together.   
  
So the next two years went by. Yuuri had moved to St. Petersburg already and they were kind of already engaged. Viktor had considered quitting again, Yakov had actually supported it that time. In a surprise turn of events, though, Yakov pulled through and took Yuuri on.   
  
Viktor competed through Worlds 2017 and then pulled out of the beginning of the 2018 season due to injury—his hip again. He made it back for a poor showing at Nationals but somehow, by the skin of his teeth, made the Olympics. He just barely scraped by with a silver. Honestly, he should have been kicked off the podium altogether but Altin fell apart just enough to take third and that Canadian kid retired on the ice with an injury.   
  
“Not in the mood, Makka.” He shouted in response to the pawing at the door.   
  
He’d take him out later.   
  
“Viktor, did you leave bed at all?” Yuuri sounded actually upset. It wasn’t the patient, soothing voice he’d been using. This was more...panicked. “Vitya, Makka didn’t have any water! And you need to get up, you didn’t eat breakfast or lunch.”   
  
“Tired.”   
  
“You can’t be tired, you slept all day!”   
  
“Didn’t sleep last night.” Viktor tried to close his eyes again.   
  
“I know you didn’t. Neither did I, you were too restless. What’s wrong?”   
  
“Nothing’s wrong.”   
  
“You’ve been in bed since the Olympics. I need a better answer.” Yuuri’s voice sounded far more worried than angry, but it didn’t help.   
  
“Tomorrow.”   
  
“Today, Vitya.”   
  
No response.   
  
“Fine. Fine, just please eat dinner with me. I—I’m worried.” Yuuri came around the bed to kneel in front of his fiancés face and Viktor could see he’d been crying. “Yes?”   
  
He could do dinner.   
  
—————   
  
Yuuri convinced him that therapy could help. Viktor only let himself be talked into it because Yuuri came home the next day and cried again, looking on the verge of a panic attack. Viktor hadn’t felt super in touch with much of the world, but he sensed that much and didn’t want to add to Yuuri’s stress anymore.   
  
Four weeks in and now on medication, after a referral to a psychiatrist, he felt...   
  
Strange.   
  
Yuuri was just happy to know Viktor was feeling good enough to leave bed. While he still didn’t really venture outside and he’d still not been to the rink (or the gym, to Yuuri’s mild concern) he had at least been productive.   
  
He woke up. He ate. He watched tv.   
  
Therapy...didn’t help. Or, maybe it did but it just felt worse. Viktor stared down at his notebook. Yuuri was out running basic errands, they needed sustenance and all that and he didn’t like doing his therapy homework with his future husband around. It made him feel weird.   
  
Yuuri didn’t have therapy homework.   
  
He was supposed to be writing what he looked forward to in the future and he’d been frustrated because nothing was coming to him. There wasn’t one thing he wanted to happen. There were no new programs for next year. The Olympic season had passed. There wasn’t any important mile marker to chase. There was no job to seek or anything—part two of the assignment was to think what he wanted to be.   
  
Like he was a child.   
  
And that’s when he snapped. Because all he’d ever wanted to be was a skater. He wasn’t sure when he’d lost sight of that, but it had come back full force upon talk of retirement. He’d never dreamt of anything else. He was already living what he wanted to be when he grew up and now...   
  
Now he was nothing.   
  
“Vitya?” Yuuri’s voice sounded so far away and Viktor didn’t understand why. He was sitting in the living room, right in front of the door. Yuuri’s voice should be right behind him, clear as a whistle. “Vitya?”   
  
That sounded further, but he swore he heard footsteps. Maybe he was still outside the door.   
  
Oh. There he was. Viktor heard the door swing open, but it wasn’t heavy like the front door normally was and Makka didn’t come rushing past him to greet Yuuri.   
  
“Oh my god.” Why did Yuuri sound like that? So suddenly upset...Viktor had gotten out of bed today, he shouldn’t be upset.   
  
Yuuri was speaking Russian now. They tended to speak English at home out of habit, but Yuuri’s Russian was really good.   
  
“Yes. He’s awake, he’s still—no, no vomiting. I—I think he took...I don’t know,” Yuuri sounded frantic now. “I don’t know how much he took I can’t remember how much he’s taken the past week. His prescription gets filled for only fifteen. Viktor—Vitya, please. I need you to tell me how many you—Hold on, I’m trying to ask him! Please just send an ambulance—how soon? I don’t know how long he’s been like this, I was only gone an hour.”   
  
Something wet was on his shoulder. Yuuri was crying.   
  
“Please don’t close your eyes,” That was in English. “I know, I know you’re tired. Please don’t. I’m scared, Vitya, I’m so scared... Don’t close them if you won’t open them again—“   
  
Russian again. Viktor could recognize his native tongue, but not the words.   
  
  
—————   
  
Viktor panicked when he first woke up. The ceiling was unfamiliar, for starters, and then there was the fact he couldn’t breathe.   
  
“Viktor, oh my god—“ That was Yuuri but he couldn’t turn his head. This only made him panic further, shrill beeping meeting his ears as people rushed around him.   
  
When he woke up again, his throat was sore, the ceiling was new again, but he could breathe.   
  
And Yuuri was sleeping in the chair next to him when he turned his head.   
  
“Yuuri?” His voice sounded like a smoker’s, or maybe just like it hadn’t been used in a while.   
  
The sleeping form stirred, but his fiancé always did take a while to come to. Viktor observed the worry-lines set in his forehead and the bags under his eyes until they opened.   
  
“Viktor,” He sounded so relieved.   
  
“Why are we in the hospital?” Viktor hadn’t been to one since his first hip injury.   
  
“You—you don’t remember?” Yuuri’s voice wavered. “Oh, Vitya...”   
  
Up close, the bags were so much worse. Yuuri was known to gain weight quickly, but he’d never lost it fast and yet his face looked so gaunt.   
  
“Yuuri?”   
  
His fiancé was crying, fingers twined tightly with Viktor’s own.   
  
“You—I was so scared I lost you. It’s my fault, I should have—I should have talked to you about it more. I shouldn’t have left you alone. You’d never been on medication before and I didn’t even think. I didn’t realize you’d meant you really didn’t see a future. I’m so sorry—“   
  
“Yuuri, I—“   
  
“—I was just so happy you seemed better. You were walking around again and eating. I didn’t think to check in before I left. I didn’t even realize you were hurting so badly. I thought, I thought, I—“   
  
“What happened?” Viktor asked quietly.   
  
“Y-you...Vitya, you overdosed.”   
  
“I...” It seemed so foreign an idea. He didn’t remember it at all, just a haze of panicked movements and a spiral of thoughts...   
  
“Thank god. If you’d, if you’d—“ Yuuri shuddered a breath, turning away and tucking the bottom of his face into his elbow. Viktor knee from experience that was Yuuri’s way to keep from sobbing, biting down on something so the sounds couldn’t escape. But he showed the same, desperate emotion in other ways: the clench of his fingers, the shaking of his shoulders.   
  
His hand never left Viktor’s.   
  
“I’m sorry.” Viktor whispered. “I don’t remember it.”   
  
“They said you might not.” Yuuri shook his head and wiped the tears. “I don’t care. I don’t care, you’re here. That’s all I wanted. I wanted you back. You looked...you looked so small.”   
  
He could only imagine what he’d do if Yuuri were in this bed instead of him.   
  
“I shouldn’t have looked. I saw your notebook. I think...I think we need to talk.”   
  
  
—————   
  
“Viktor, breathe.” Yuuri’s voice reached him as his mind began to travel down a sorry spiral without his consent. “Let’s do something else.”   
  
Viktor buried his face in his hands, but nodded nonetheless.   
  
“You don’t have to go back to school, you know. There’s plenty of other things you can do.” Yuuri pointed out. He’d been helping Viktor fill out applications up until now.   
  
“I’m not good enough at anything.” Viktor pointed out. “I’m totally unqualified for everything—“   
  
“Why don’t you do something with kids?” Yuuri smiled. “You love kids.”   
  
_Little ones, yes, not anything in the teens._   
  
“Like?”   
  
“Teach dance? Teach skating? Start a non-profit to help financially support kids in athletics—“   
  
“I’ll think about it.”   
  
“You should.” He kissed Viktor’s temple. “In the meantime, let’s do something else. Wedding planning, maybe?”   
  
Yuuri kept pushing wedding planning, but he was smart. It kept Viktor’s mind focused on one track. It gave him something to look forward to. It didn’t make him feel ill, because he knew he wanted to spend the rest of his life with the man in front of him. Even his darkest of thoughts wasn’t going to ruin that fact for him.   
  
—————   
  
“This was brave of him,” Yuuri commented on the commercial that had only just played in their hotel room. They had decided to take a short trip to New York en route to more tropical destinations. Another athletic season had come and gone, they’d had their wedding.   
  
“Who is he?” Viktor frowned, not oblivious to the taken aback look Yuuri gave him. “I don’t really follow American sports.”   
  
“Michael Phelps?” Yuuri’s face was more than horrified now. “You seriously don’t know who—he’s famous, Viktor! He’s won all these things in swimming, tons of records!”   
  
“Oh...” Viktor shrugged. “Don’t really care about swimming. I don’t watch summer sports. Gymnastics sometimes—“   
  
“You must watch the Olympics?” Yuuri shrieked. “Oh my god, what kind of person are you?”   
  
“...The kind who’s been to the Olympics?”   
  
“I—ok, I’ll give you that but still. He’s really famous, ok? Trust me. Americans especially love him.” Yuuri rested his head on Viktor’s shoulder again.   
  
The tv continued, but it wasn’t a show they were really involved in.   
  
“Other people feel like this?” Viktor said quietly, maybe twenty minutes later.   
  
“Yeah,” Yuuri squeezed him. “There’s something to be said for how much you gave up to be who you are.”   
  
Yuuri, with all his selfless sacrificing. He had the nerve to look up at Viktor like it was Viktor who was the most perfect human in the whole world. Yuuri, who had suffered through years of mental illness and come out on top. He’d never let it beat him and he seemed so determined to not let it beat Viktor either.   
  
Yuuri.   
  
“I’m glad I didn’t give this up.”   
  
“Yeah?” Yuuri smirked. “Well you can’t now, you married it. You’re stuck.”   
  
“However will I survive?”

**Author's Note:**

> Here it is! Namida was an incredible zine to be a part of because the proceeds went to the Trevor Project which I believe wholeheartedly promotes a good mission. Especially at the end of a beautiful month of pride (I write this 15 minutes before the start of July where I am) I want us all to reflect on those lost. If you are LGBTQ+ or even an ally, remember we weren’t always so far along in the movement that companies were willing to go full capitalist and promote pride for a whole month. Individuals have fought for where we are and some of lost their lives fighting. Other warriors and angels have lost their lives because the world was too cruel. I want to promise you that it gets better, even if it didn’t for some of those who have come before us. It gets better and it will continue to get better so long as we keep fighting. Keep those lost and those fighting today in your thoughts and prayers. Thank you, those who organized and hosted Namida for spreading awareness and raising money for such a genuine and heartfelt cause. 
> 
> On a slightly happier note:  
> This was one of the hardest things to write ever and I’m sorry to say I have a similar, two-part work that I’ve been considering whether or not to post and now I put this out there, I might.  
> Depends on how this is received.


End file.
